Tomato Girl Summer is the future of marketing

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Notes from a Messy Desk

I’m tired. Yesterday, I flew 5,300 miles from London to attend a conference in one of my favorite places on earth: Big Sur, California. And I’m flying 5,300 miles back tomorrow.

Greenoaks, a $15B investment firm with investments in companies like Brex, Discord and Scale.AI , invited me and some baller founders to mingle and listen to folks like Mr. Beast and the founders of Figma, Stripe, Anthropic, and SKIMS talk about building companies. I got to catch up with my buds Kat Cole, CEO at AG1, and Whitney Wolfe, founder & Executive Chair at Bumble, who alone made it worth flying across the world for.

On another topic, something big is happening with this newsletter next week, so if you haven’t added us as a contact in your address book, moved us to the primary tab in your inbox, or hit reply to make sure you get our emails, do it now.

– Sophia

Song of the day: 5ft7 by Tonstartssbandht

For the first time ever, Nike’s iconic brand archives are on display. The exhibition, titled Form Follows Motion, showcases over 300 items that have been curated from the brand’s 50 years of influence . It’s a masterclass on design and building an instantly recognizable brand. Book your ticket to the Vitra Design Museum in Germany and call it a business expense. Swoosh.

Tech founders, take note: your brand matters more than ever before . When people ask why I invest in B2B software instead of consumer products, my answer is this: even business owners are consumers. The psychology is the same. People choose Squarespace over Wix (or not) for the same reason they choose a brand like Nike over competitors. Case in point: consumers are pissed about Paypal’s new logo and employees at Open AI are enraged by their proposed brand update.

Brat Summer, Tomato Girl Summer, Chipotle Boy. The latest trend in marketing is wacky, social-first, and incoherent .

Erewhon’s controversial $50 tote bags may spike in sales now that plastic shopping bags are being banned at California grocery stores .

The numbers prove that people are shopping for themselves around the holidays, and brands plan to capitalize on that in their Black Friday ads . It’s a smart move – not only are people waiting to make everyday or big ticket purchases for themselves when the deals drop, but “treat culture ” is strong.

Never stop giving me confetti for accomplishing a tiddly task online. There is a strategy to the confetti-ing of digital experiences , but I don’t think we have to rarefy these joyful moments. Paid a bill? I want confetti. Inbox zero? Confetti. Genius mode in Spelling Bee? You know what I want.

You can now rent a $3,500 two-bedroom apartment in former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann’s “conscious community” compound in Saudi Arabia. Flow is Neumann’s new co-living venture that raised $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz in 2022. The future of living is furnished apartments that come with laundry and housekeeping services with on-site coworking spaces, gyms, and a pool. So… a hotel.

Amazon is launching its own version of “Shark Tank” called “Buy It Now .” The premise is about the same – entrepreneurs can pitch their products to judges (including Goop’s Gwyneth Paltrow and designer Christian Siriano) and win $20,000 plus their product showcased in a dedicated spot on Amazon’s online store.

Zoom is slowing its roll on paying workers with equity, and they’re not alone . The reason is simple: they’re giving away too much and diluting existing shareholders, primarily founders and investors, along the way. Let’s just hope they have enough cash comp to cough up to satisfy workers.

Investor Balaji (formerly of Coinbase and Andreessen Horowitz) wants startups to form their own nations . The gist of his idea, called “the network state”, is that communities would first start online, then acquire land and form their own laws based on shared values, and would eventually replace nation states. You can choose which startup nation you want to join.

Balaji isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) to try and play techno-Napoleon. Billionaire Marc Lore tried to build a utopian city in the desert . A former Goldman Sachs trader and a bunch of tech billionaires bought farmland in rural California to build a walkable, high-tech city called California Forever . And then there’s Neom, a controversial desert megacity in Saudi Arabia that cost $1.5 trillion to develop and yet can’t save its image even with a bunch of influencer marketing (which are mostly the wives of Neom employees).

You can now hire someone on Fiverr to source investors for your startup.

Brands are increasingly taking a magazine-style approach to photography, bucking the algorithm in favor of print-style glossy marketing campaigns that tell stories.

Some great tips from AdAge on how your business can stand out during amidst the noise of election season .

TLDR:

• Marketing to your existing customers is cheaper and more predictable than marketing to new ones in a sea of noise. This also extends into winning back your churned customers and revisiting customers who have expressed high intent to buy (abandoned cart, etc.).
• Focusing on your owned channels (website, email, stores) will drive higher ROI
• Make sure you don’t have a leaky bucket. Test every page, analyze hotspots and where users get hung up on your site, and optimize – whether it’s design, copy, or functionality. Even small tweaks can affect conversion dramatically, and at scale it adds up.

Patreon is making it even easier for creators to turn free members into paying ones. The platform added an automated feature called Autopilot that identifies which free members are most likely to upgrade to paid and then emails them a discount.

Listen to ChatGPT scream.

Ozempic has made a bunch of money with its brand jingle. But it’s not just them – turns out brand jingles are back. Maybelline brought back “Maybe it’s Maybelline ” last week, and Band-Aid brought back their 2008 jingle on TikTok in April with the same actress from the original TV spot.

Is your passport expired? Well, if it’s been less than five years, you can now renew it entirely online and you can do it here .

Writers and marketers can now turn your blog posts into cute infographics using this tool.

Four words: Herman Miller work pods . You can tell when someone’s taking your Zoom call from a co-working space – that awkward angle, the cramped vibe, the drab background. Herman Miller’s pods are designed with specific backgrounds and lighting to flatter any skin tone or clothing.

The secret to Hot Wings success: empathy and research . If you want to run a successful interview series, you gotta research like it’s your job (it is).

This website curates winning A/B tests from best-in-class apps.

Great tips on saving to buy yourself a house .

Side hustle idea: get really good at ordering around the machines. Prompt engineering – creating specific prompts to instruct an AI model what kind of output you want – is a hot skill right now . Nearly every industry is using generative AI to level up their productivity, but not everyone is a pro at getting the generative AI chatbots to spit out the best results.

Our friends at Masters of Scale have invited Business Class to join their Summit in San Francisco this October 22 - 24. It’s described as part TED, part tech conference, part The Moth with speakers like OpenAI’s Bret Taylor, PATTERN Beauty’s Tracee Ellis Ross, Canva’s Guy Kawasaki, and SKIMS’ Emma Grede. Register at this private link using the code BUSINESSCLASS24. It’s selling out fast.

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